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Cool change coming round the corner
Cool change coming round the corner
Restless litter in the street, time is nipping at our heels
In the morning we won’t know why we ever wore these clothes

Cool change coming round the corner
Cool change coming round the corner
Waking up, venetian blinds, construction work outside
Now the sudden need for pants like the last day of school camp

Cool change coming round the corner
Cool change coming round the corner
Soon again it will be May, we’ll go to parties in the rain
Travel plans will be arranged, get your coat and scarf again
Just a thought and then a day, put those summer clothes away
Always leaving things behind, always making up our minds

Cool change coming round the corner
Old age is coming for us

Track Name: Guilty Wretch

I don’t know, I’ve just been told, guilty wretch that I am
I came into the house after everything was settled
That night we went without meat and everything was scuttled
Three of us were cornered had to come up with a story
One for them and one for us and one for the informants

I don’t know, I’ve just been told, there is right, and wrong
Look out on the corner and you’ll see a heart of darkness
My friends were waiting for me I could see no better option
Mother came to meet me, said that I should reconsider
I said I’d write a story and that I would put her in it

I don’t know, I’ve just been told, I won’t grow old
There’s another detail that I won’t neglect to mention
Sullivan was doing thing beyond the group’s intentions
In the mountains behind Nelson he came forth as the true villain
As we dug the shallow grave and took the three pounds sixteen shillings
From a labourer we came upon the track while we were waiting
We took those three months’ wages and we drank them down in town
And at the tavern I could tell that he had plans to make me look bad
But I was only robbing the Maori camp I hope you understand
Those Jury men, they’ve just been told different laws than my own

There are many crimes to which I’m readily confessing
And others which I’ll spend my dying days to have corrected
Thieves will have their owner if they hold the silence golden
And they know the biggest rule of all is ‘always be a man’
And guilty wretch that I am, at least I have that

Track Name: Detroit

One morning in Manchester, I’ve never been there but I can picture it
The kitchen scene, the flowers growing in spite of it
The kettle boiling like puberty, tell the girls to be in time for tea
Outside there’s boys in jeans with no need to wear sunglasses
Staring back at me, the post industrial poster boys
For a feeling that I sometimes have when I’m gazing up at power lines in a fading light

That we are all Detroit, we are all Detroit
We will all be destroyed, we will all be unemployed
We are all Detroit, our feelings are embroiled
We will be reborn one morning in Detroit

Slouching to Bethlehem under blue skies in Baltimore, there is grandeur here
Old stories will reappear under ancient signs of the groceries of the sixties
There’s nothing quite as old as Modernity
Each morning the sun still shines and we will ask what’s for breakfast
Cheerios at nine, served with poverty in excess
In the bar tonight is the unbending instinct which is not concerned with dignity
There’s more than one way to lose your virginity

And we are all Detroit, we are all Detroit
We will all be destroyed, we will all be unemployed
We are all Detroit, our feelings are embroiled
We will be reborn one morning in Detroit

We will all foreclose, a mix of fading-fast instinct
And the roots and leaves of incorrigible pheromones
On the prairie lawn we reap what we have sewn
We click our heels and grow familiar with the mould

Track Name: Waiting On A Fool

Still remember that feeling of waiting on a fool
On many an evening when I was a youth I was waiting on a fool
Those taxis and sirens were calling in the night again

The phone is calling like a foghorn, the obscenity of spring
Letterboxes leering, pollen is just semen, sing a journey song
And hold on to that steering, you’re on the ship of fools again

Scene of sunset and silos out over a plain
On the edge of something, still so far away yet I followed like a moon
And swam through dark waters to sirens in the night again

I was waiting on a fool, I was waiting on a fool
I was waiting on a fool to change their mind
They never do

They never do

I was waiting on a fool, I was waiting on a fool
I was waiting on a fool to change their mind
They never do

Track Name: The Orchard

Woodman, spare that tree
Touch not a single bough
In youth it sheltered me and I'll protect it now

Rule Britannia, let the wind blow over orchards that never need to dry
Run the rivers in a straight line over land under a clear blue sky
The plan was not to die, the plan has been revised

Woodman, spare that tree
Touch not a single bough
In youth it sheltered me, and I'll protect it now

Call up the mountains to the excavating harvest
Machines to make a new cemetery of the fruit trees of our youth
For all the running wild, we just fattened in the sty
Like Menzies era pride

[La-la-la]
They do this when it’s green
When happens when it’s dry?

Woodman, spare that tree
Touch not a single bough
In youth it sheltered me
But the orchard’s empty now

Woodman, spare that tree
Touch not a single bough
In youth it sheltered me
But the orchard’s empty now
The orchard’s empty now

Track Name: Doreen

The city in the distance, and a ripple in the long grass
An exit from the highway, and a stillness in the sunshine
A home is like a long dream, there’s room for dreams in Doreen
And some people dream about making amphetamines

An old drag on a new street, police tape on a crime scene
A kitchen in a garage, a body beaten savage
Police would like to speak to two men driving a white ute
They’re asking round locally for help with inquiries

Police said it had all the hallmarks of some sort of debt
There’s fixed rate or there’s varied rate or there’s just a kick in the head
It’s not supposed to be here, crime is a city thing
I saw it in a movie; the man gives up his life of crime for a girl called

This place on a Sunday might as well be the moon
In outer space there are places less inclined to put you down
The human race, in its wisdom
Would sooner send a man into space than see a girl walking around alone here
For all of the welcome she will find this might as well be the moon

The window lace, like the red sea, parts wherever your foot will fall
Those floating eyes in the darkness see everything but the truth
The sidewalk sighs, you should know now
They’re making little steps up above us
There won’t be a television broadcast, but this might as well be the moon

Without a trace of a footprint you’re just a shadow in a headlight
In broken glass diamonds after midnight
With all of these strangers that you know, this might as well be the moon

Track Name: The End Of The Affair

The church bells were ringing, announcing new resolve
The same bells that told me that the war had been won
Announcing to the world in their dulcet tones
The end of the affair
The end of the affair

When I grow old I’ll count my money
In silver coins and little boxes on the ground
If I have time, I’ll count my lovers
In silvers frames and yellow pictures of the mind
The curtain calls, two eyes receding
Like those above at the end of the affair

And the church bells were ringing, announcing new resolve
The same bells that told me that the war had been won
Announcing to the world in their dulcet tones
The end of the affair
The end of the affair

When we are gone, they’ll play our records
And hear the sound of little voices that they find
In place of you, they’ll read your letters
And speculate on what is lost between the lines
So long ago, someone was lonely
Could hardly wait to begin the whole affair

And the old men were singing in the hotel down the road
And I found the perfect prayer that seemed to suit the winter mood
Oh God, you’ve done enough, you’ve robbed me of enough
Leave me alone forever, leave me alone forever
At the end of the affair
The end of the affair

Track Name: Sitting On A Train

So, sitting on a train, going home again
Going from city to another
Blue light out in the dark, hear the engines start
Rolling slowly over and under tracks of other peoples’ lives
You see them in the lights, going from one station to another
Then somewhere in the night, awakening my eyes
A scene that is not home but is familiar

So, sitting on a train, going home again
Going from city to another
Blue light out in the dark, see the nighttime start
Coloured in for people who are lying still
They’ll be here the next day, but we’ll be on our way, going from one city to another

See this country in the dark, the trees like body parts
Crawling out of gullies in the act of haunting those who stay
In a place that is too strange to ever make much sense in the middle of the night
See the lack of rain, feels like home again
Travelling from Sydney to Melbourne
Signs of other peoples’ lives flickering outside
Flickering like eyes in the middle of the night

So, sitting on a train, see the landscape change
Going from city to another
Blue light out in the dark, see the nighttime start
Coloured in for people who are lying still
They’ll be here the next day, but we’ll be on our way, going from one city to another
Red light out on the plain, see the morning made
Coloured in for people who are waiting here
In a place that shouldn’t be home to anyone
But is home to every person that I’ve ever known

Track Name: Good Women (alternative version)

The good ones know when to back down
The good ones know how to say no
They don’t do it too friendly, they don’t do it too cold
Good women don’t let themselves go

The good ones don’t look for a man
The good ones always find a man
They don’t do it too early, they don’t do it too late
Good women always exfoliate

And on the outskirts of town
That’s where the bad girls go down
They do it too early, they do it too late
We don’t stay late at the grave

You’d better stop your rambling around
Or be that girl you heard about
You’d better stand up on the alter
You’d better make that deal
To make it out of this world in one piece

Track Name: A Place To Go

How could it be so, how could it be so
How could it be so that they’re singing these songs
Where the ground does not grow
And the factories close
On the points of the globe not well known for their niceties
Over and over, a story unfolding
The music most wanted by the people most not
With just a place to go, a place to go
A place to go and a place to leave

Send to them a pied piper
Send him to find them
Soon they will stream in to the cities and towns
Bringing with them their daughters and tales of misfortune
Their widows and orphans all set to a song
If you catch them a-singing
It’s like the light streaming
On a corner of woods with the branch overturned
See the animals stream, their conditions revealed
Hear the noises they make as they scatter for miles
Give them a place to go, a place to go
A place to go and a place to leave